{"id":4218,"date":"2015-03-15T01:10:33","date_gmt":"2015-03-15T05:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/?p=4218"},"modified":"2015-03-15T01:10:33","modified_gmt":"2015-03-15T05:10:33","slug":"cynicism-on-the-frontier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/15\/cynicism-on-the-frontier\/","title":{"rendered":"Cynicism on the frontier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/ct.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/ct-300x254.png\" alt=\"ct\" width=\"300\" height=\"254\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-4225\" srcset=\"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/ct-300x254.png 300w, http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/ct.png 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Excerpt from &#8220;How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p>We were still working under a Joint Service contract, managed by the U.S. Army Signal Corps. [&#8230;] One day, after we had been at it for about two years, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Isidor_Isaac_Rabi\">Rabi<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Polykarp_Kusch\">Kusch<\/a>, the former and current chairmen of the department&#8211;both of them Nobel laureates for their work with atomic and molecular beams, and both with a lot of weight behind their opinions&#8211; came into my office and sat down. They were worried. Their research depended on support from the same source as did mine. <strong>&#8220;Look,&#8221; they said, &#8220;you should stop the work you are doing. It isn&#8217;t going to work. You know it&#8217;s not going to work. We know it&#8217;s not going to work. You&#8217;re wasting money. Just stop!&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The problem was that I was still an outsider to the field of molecular beams, as they saw it. It was their field and they did not think I fully appreciated the pertinent physics. [&#8230;] Yet I had gone over the numbers very carefully with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_P._Gordon\">Gordon<\/a> and Zeiger. I knew that the chances for quick success were somewhat marginal, but that the physics undergirding the concept was sound and the numbers promising.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_H._Townes\">Charles H. Townes<\/a>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/nobel_prizes\/physics\/laureates\/1964\/townes-bio.html\">Nobel laureate<\/a>. He passed away on January 27 of this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/ct.png\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Excerpt from &#8220;How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p>We were still working under a Joint Service contract, managed by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.  One day, after we had been at it&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/15\/cynicism-on-the-frontier\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4218"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4226,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions\/4226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}